Shopping, shopping, shopping…

There has never been a time in my life where I actually enjoyed going shopping. Wait, that’s not true, when I bought my first road bike, I was actually more than excited to go out and buy it. I also like looking at sporting goods and all kinds of athletic shoes. Other than that though, shopping has never been on my list of super fun things to do. For me, it’s more like a chore unlike other people who view shopping as a fun hobby.

Now that you know my stance on shopping, you’ll now understand why going maternity clothes shopping was an outing that I wasn’t quite looking forward to. So when I did finally take the plunge and do it, it was quite the experience to say the least. My husband Dave and I went together. The only place that I knew of to get any kind of maternity clothes was at the mall in Green Bay. We made our way there on that fateful day back in January and found ourselves, after some walking and heel digging on my part, at the clothing store called Motherhood Maternity. We walked in and I was immediately overwhelmed by everything that I saw. There were strange looking pants with funny panels, tops that were oddly shaped and over sized, and a whole bunch of other odd stuff that freaked me out. Basically, I almost turned around and walked out.

Before I could walk out though, a sales associate by the name of Samantha came to my aid and asked if I needed any help. I think she sensed that I was completely out of my element so it was nice to be asked if I needed help for a change by a sales associate. I told her “Yes,” and she proceeded to ask me a few different questions including when I was due, what type of clothes did I like, what size I was, and so on and so forth. She started picking out things for me to wear left and right and said I should do the same. This is where things got frustrating because I couldn’t find anything that I liked. I mean, I scoured the entire store for like 20 minutes and when it was time to try things on, I had two pairs of pants that I thought were okay and Samantha the sales rep had about 13 things for me to see if I liked. Let’s just say, I’m not a fan of frilly girly clothes and that’s all that was in that store. It was all this form fitting stuff with lace and flowers not to mention how everything was either low cut, low rise or most of the pants in the place had a flare on the bottom. Not cool, not cool at all given that my style is no-nonsense and straight forward. I like t-shirts, sweatshirts, boot-cut jeans, and plain clothes that look nice. I don’t need anything with pretty patterns or clothes that leave little to the imagination if you know what I mean. I like to be covered and I like to look sporty, which means, as I’ve mentioned a bunch of times before, you’ll see me wearing a Nike sweatshirt and jeans, an Adidas t-shirt and shorts, or my lounge clothes.

Two pairs of pants I decided I didn't mind wearing.

Okay, with that rant of frilly clothes out of the way, I’ll get into how trying on all the clothes went. In short, it wasn’t all that fun. Things were too small, too short, too uncomfortable, and not all that appealing to my fashion eye, well, if I had one I guess. J I tried on one pair of jeans and almost laughed. I came out to show Dave and Samantha was like, “Those look great!” All chipper to make a sale and I was like, “No, they’re way too small!” She was nice about it and got me the next size up, insisting that they’d be too big. To her, they ended up being too big, but for me, they ended up being just right as they were a bit baggy and actually kind of looked like real jeans even if they had the weird maternity tummy fabric going on. I can’t complain about her though, she was tremendously helpful and kept coming with more options and took away everything that I didn’t like. After all the trying on, I ended up with three pairs of pants, a cute outfit for the baby (which Dave found), and some tummy butter for my belly. 

The cute baby outfit we found!

In total, I spent $178 and was completely floored. I did earn some Bump Bucks to use on future purchases at the store, yet it was still a lot of money to spend. Probably the worst part of it was that we were in there for almost an hour and a half. Yes you read that right, we were in there for almost an hour and a half looking for clothes, it was borderline nuts. To reward myself, I got an Orange Julius afterwards. It was well deserved. Dave mind you was rewarded with a nice frosty mug of beer at a local establishment later in the evening. He deserved that beer for how nice he when I was trying on clothes. If he didn’t like something or if it didn’t quite look right, he would let me know without hurting my feelings. Really cool.

The shirt I found at Target.

After learning from the shopping extravaganza at the Motherhood Maternity store, I now only shop in about 15-20 minute increments to find maternity clothes. This strategy has paid off due to the fact that the next time I went out to look, I found a nice pair of maternity khakis at Younkers. In and out in about 15 minutes and I was even able to get them on sale. I was also able to find a few shirts another time I went shopping, this time at Target, and now my new favorite place to shop for maternity clothes, yes I now have a favorite maternity outlet, is Old Navy. However, not the store itself, but online. When I checked the store in Green Bay, they didn’t have a lot of options. I was able to figure out my sizing when I was there though and later went online to see what they had. Come to find out, they do have a lot of options and if you catch their online store on the right day, you can get everything pretty cheap. I bought like six items the other day, paid only $88 and got free shipping, which was refreshing after spending a huge chunk of money the first time around.

In the end I’m still not a fan of shopping, even if I did find some stuff to wear. To me it’s always going to be a chore, but at least I know how to shop now without getting too frustrated! Yeyeyee for me! Until next time, it’s Carla the tomboy signing off!